


This Might Just Be the Ending

by Murf1307



Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: And that MCD is fixed by the end of the first chapter, Angst, Apocalypse, Crossover, F/M, Loads and Loads of Characters - Freeform, M/M, Prophecy, so it's fine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years ago, Stiles Stilinski made a deal to save Derek's life.  It's come due, but that's only the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stilinski Rising

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as a response to a prompt made by affectingly on Tumblr and cosigned by hungrylikethewolfie/ladyblahblah. It kind of got away from me.

He’s had a good decade.  Honest.

He doesn’t regret what he did.  He did a lot of stupid things as a teenager, especially that year, but this part?  He couldn’t regret it if he tried.

Peter had betrayed them again (of course; everyone had seen it coming, but Peter had still somehow gotten the jump on them), and Derek had been dying, dying faster than he could possibly heal, but slowly enough that it was torture.

And this time, unlike the first time Derek had climbed into his car, pale-faced and bleeding from a wolfsbane bullet, there really was no cure.

Stiles had known too well what wasting sickness looks like, because of his mom.

He wasn’t going to lose another person.

Not this time.

Not Derek.

So he walked out to a crossroads on a myth and a hunch, and buried his driver’s license in the earth there.

The demon came, and that had been Stiles’s first kiss.

He gave it for a good cause.  He holds that true even now, as the clock ticks down his final hours.  It’s a full moon, and the pack is out running — they always run.

By the time they get home, the hounds will already have taken Stiles.

He’s thankful for that.  He doesn’t want to think about the pack fighting the hounds for him — it took a long time for him to realize that, given the chance, they would — because Hell is stronger than any pack.

He’s going to die alone, die human, die damned.

But his life has been blessed.  He wouldn’t trade these ten years with the pack as it grew to be than he would an immortality without it.

Allison came back to Scott, after a long while.  They’ve got two kids, Mels and Chrissy, and they’re in pre-school.  Scott’s a teacher, and Allison helps out at the animal clinic.  Isaac mostly runs it now, with Deaton gone in the last fight before things calmed down for good about five years ago.

Erica and Boyd bought a house in the woods, and they seem to enjoy the wild life more than anyone else in the pack.

Lydia’s defending her dissertation next week down at Caltech, and Stiles wishes he could be there to see that, really.  She’s going to take the professors by storm, he knows.

Jackson married her last year, and he’s teaching at Beacon Hills High, too.  He’s good with the kids — he’s grown up in ways Stiles would never have expected when they were young.  Jackson really had been an asshole back then, but he’s learned, he’s grown.

They all have.

Derek, Derek’s the best alpha on the West Coast now.  He knows what he’s doing, and he remembers that love is more powerful than fear can ever be.

It’s hard to think about Derek tonight, as the clock chimes ten, then eleven, and the hands count down Stiles’ last hour.  It’s hard to imagine what Derek’s going to do when he realizes what Stiles has done.  It’s almost worse than thinking about what Dad’s going to do without him.

He’s got responsibilities.  A job.  Derek.

He presses his fingertips against his lips at 11:55, while hellhounds are snuffling at the door to the house.  He remembers the last kiss, soft and almost absent as Derek slid his jacket on and headed out with the betas.

Stiles hadn’t had the heart to make it desperate.

It’s 11:59.  He opens the door.

He closes his eyes, and it’s midnight.

* * *

 It’s three days before any of the betas can sack up enough to enter the Hale house after Stiles is dragged off by hellhounds.

They hadn’t even believed in hellhounds until Lydia found this chick named Talbot, whose eyes were dead and her voice deadpan.  The woman was years older than all of them, but she’d seen it all before.  Lived it, actually.

Anyway, Erica’s the one who pushes open the door and enters, claws pushing out just a little and Boyd’s arm steady around her waist.

Derek’s just lost his mate, after all.  

There’s no knowing what that could have done to him, after everything else he’s lost. 

Derek is in his and Stiles’ bedroom, and it smells of Stiles and memory and pain — Derek’s pain, and none of the betas have ever smelled pain that strong, that all-consuming — and it’s terrifying.

He glances at them, wolfed-out but placid, blankets tangled in his arms like he’s trying to keep Stiles’ scent close.

“We’ve — we might have a lead.”  Scott’s the one to speak, Isaac at his elbow.

“What.” Derek can barely vocalize it as a word.

Lydia slips around from behind Jackson, hair bound up and eyes blazing.  She, more than any of them, understands this kind of pain, because she’s the one who was haunted by Peter’s specter back when they were still kids.  ”There’s a woman, going by Bela Talbot.  Says she was raised from Hell.  The betas can tell she’s telling the truth.”

Derek growls and lunges forward, but Lydia stands her ground even as Jackson makes an aborted movement to get between them.

“You need an angel.”

* * *

  _Meanwhile, in Hell…_

Meg is her name now, though here subordinates call her their Queen.  She’s reigned in Hell for Hell-centuries now — she took out Crowley with the help of the Winchesters, and played nice for long enough to get things back into balance, years ago on Earth.

It didn’t take much to bring Hell back to what it was always meant to be, the way her father and her Lord had made it back in the beginning.

She is a horror and a terror in her true form, a one-winged, black-eyed bitch of a thing, and it is freeing to be without flesh like this.  She loves Hell, and she rules it well.  She was always meant to.

But every now and then, something new comes along.

The Stilinski boy is one of those things.

He was dragged down, like the rest of these poor sons of bitches, and of course he’d made his deal for love — that seems to be the craze.  Once a Winchester does it, it seems like everybody wants to get in on the action.

But he just won’t break.

A twenty-seven-year-old with little experience of torture generally barely lasts a week on the rack before he begs to be taken down.

Stilinski hasn’t said a thing.  Hasn’t screamed.  Hasn’t broken.

It’s been thirty-seven days in Hell.

He may not be Dean Winchester, but Dean had always been an idiot.  Meg wonders what this particular man has to hold on to.

So she sweeps down, all fire and flash and brimstone in her black eyes and scorched wing, all glory and dishonor being hers in her kingdom.  She finds him on the rack, and he looks at her with honey-colored eyes that are distressingly familiar.

She can’t place why.

“You’ve caught my attention, kid,” she says, her voice creaking an approximation of the last one she used on earth.  ”You’ve lasted a lot longer than most in your demographic.”

Stilinski  keeps staring at her like he recognizes her, and there’s more of an itch in her than there’s ever been.  But still he says nothing.

For a long moment, the only sounds are the manifold screams of the damned.

And then, there is another sound:

The shriek of angels’ voices.

* * *

 Stiles remembers nothing but white light and hellfire when he wakes up in a clearing in the woods.

Well, it’s not so much a clearing as it is like the frigging crash site for the Tunguska Event.  It looks like something massive burned through here, heat and light and force all making the trees break and bend when it came down.

He has to say, in terms of weird ways to wake up, this is up there on the list of weirdest.

But at least he has clothes on.  That should be comforting.

What isn’t comforting is the fact that he’s, y’know, alive, and not in Hell where he’s supposed to be.

The idea scratches at the back of his mind:  _What if, what if…_

But he can’t stand to finish that sentence.  Too many terrible things can happen if he goes down that road, and he’d rather not deal with in until he has to.

He recognizes the clearing, or what’s left of it, though.

He’s still in pack territory.

Well, not much else he can do right now but find his way home.

He wonders how long he’s been gone.  He can’t remember how time passed in Hell, really, can’t remember much beyond the vague idea of brimstone and fire and something not quite demon grinning at him, with deep inky eyes and the bearing of a queen.  And pain, but that memory can wait.

He walks through the woods until he finds the road, and follows the road home.

He half-fears what he’ll find when he gets there.

* * *

 Every window in the Hale house blows out at once, the high pitched shrieking that causes it completely incapacitating the werewolves inside.

As Alpha, Derek rises first, wolfed-out and ready to destroy whatever is invading his home now, as broken and grieving as it is.  He will not risk any more losses.  He would rather die than let that happen.

But nothing happens for a very long moment, and the betas rise as well, sniffing the air around them, feeling for whatever has just rocketed through their home.

He settles, just a little, and growls at Boyd to check the wards on the house.

A pang runs through him, remembering the weekend that Stiles and Lydia had painted those wards into the foundations and walls of the house, making it safe and keyed to pack and pack only.  It had been early, before Derek had let himself want — much less have — Stiles, soon after the destruction of the Alpha Pack.

But that’s years ago.  Ten years ago.

Derek digs his claws into the heels of his hands when he curls them into fists.

He stands there, waiting.

And then there’s a knock on the door.

* * *

 

Stiles isn’t sure what to expect when Derek opens the door, but he figures that Derek’s reaction pretty much nails it.

Derek stares at him for a long moment and then yanks him inside, slamming him into the wall.

“Thought we got over this, like, most of a decade ago,” Stiles mumbles.  “Seriously, man, put me down.  Or something.”  Because Derek has this _look_ on his face, and those are definitely claws.

Derek takes a deep breath, shoving his face into the juncture of Stiles’s neck and shoulder, and relents.

“It’s you,” he growls back.  “You’re alive.”

“And how exactly is that?” Stiles asks, going deadly serious.  They can celebrate later, if there’s anything to celebrate over.

Derek puts him down, but still crowds into his space.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know.”

“We’ve pretty much had him on lockdown,” comes Lydia’s voice as she and the others turn the corner into the atrium of the house.  She sounds a little shaky, and they all look it.  “We’ve all been.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t us.”

“We promise,” Scott adds.

Stiles’s heart breaks a little.  Everyone is keyed-up, tense – the wolves are on the edge of letting loose, and Lydia and Allison are scared in a way he hasn’t seen in years.

“And my Dad?” Stiles finally asks, quiet.

“I’m here,” he says, coming round the corner.  “And you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, young man.”

Stiles feels like he’s sixteen again, and can’t help but smile.

* * *

 

It takes about half an hour, all told, to tell the story.  Because Derek keeps snuffling against Stiles, holding on like he’s never going to let Stiles out of his sight again, and Stiles’s voice breaks about halfway through and there’s this impromptu puppy-pile (Stiles is the one who called them that first, and no one else will admit that that’s what they’re called, but come on.  It’s a pack thing.) until he’s ready to keep going.

Dad and Derek look torn when he’s finished, like they don’t know how to feel.

Stiles starts with Derek.  ”You’re not allowed to blame yourself, okay?  I did it because I wanted you to be okay.  And I’d do it again if I had to.”  And he kisses him, strong and steady (even though he feels like he’s bound to fly apart), fingers running briefly in his hair in the way he knows Derek finds most comforting.

When he’s sure it’s okay, he pulls back a little to turn to his father.  ”And I’m sorry.  To be honest…back then, I wasn’t sure if any of us were going to live to graduate.”

Dad smiles.  ”I’m proud of you.  But you’re not allowed to do something like this again, d’you understand?”

Stiles nods.  ”I know.”

Scott worms over, pulling Allison with him.  ”The first thing you’re doing when Derek finally lets you leave the house is babysit the girls.  You’re going to be babysitting for the rest of forever, dude.”

“I can totally take that as a punishment,” Stiles responds, cuffing Scott easily on the shoulder.

He feels like an ass, to be honest.  This is his family, and dying on them seems like a dick move, especially now.  No matter how much of a good idea the deal had seemed to be at the time.  No matter how, even now, buried underneath his family, his pack, instead of six feet of earth, he doesn’t regret it at all.

“This doesn’t settle the question of what brought you back,” Erica says, draped over Boyd with sharp eyes.

Lydia nods from her position curled underneath Jackson, grabbing at Stiles’s ankle.  ”The only thing we can come up with is an angel.  And we’re not even sure that those are real.”

Stiles tries to think back, tries to remember, but even the hellfire seems vague and indistinct.

“I can’t remember anything,” he says, pressing closer to Derek.

And that’s probably the most unsettling fact of all.


	2. Deliver Me in a Black Winged Bird

Derek can smell the intruder on their doorstep even from the upstairs bedroom.  It disturbs him from a sound sleep, curled around Stiles like a starving man curls around food or a drowning man clings to a life raft.

Stiles is asleep, comfortable and unknowing.  He doesn’t know what the pack went through in those five days between finding him dead on the porch and his return.

Derek’s not bitter about it — he’s too glad to have Stiles back.

But losing him had hurt the pack almost more than they could stand.  Pain had poured through all of them like nothing any of them — except Derek — had felt before.

And now, there is something unrecognizable on their doorstep.

It’s not human, not completely, and the rest of it doesn’t smell like anything they’ve ever encountered — and they’ve seen a lot.  They’ve had wendigos and witches and all sorts of things, but never something that smells like this.

He spends a few minutes waiting, but the thing just stands on the porch and refuses to leave.  He can smell its stubbornness from here.

So he presses a kiss to Stiles’ jawbone and jostles him a little to wake him.

Whatever’s down there, they’ll face it together.  The pack’s already downstairs, and the wolves are rousing.  Lydia and Allison are probably still asleep like Stiles is.

If it’s come for Stiles, it’s going to have a bloodbath on its hands.

* * *

Stiles is nervous as they walk down the stairs.  Derek’s in his space, like he’s ready to push Stiles back if this goes bad.  He’s not actually upset about that.  If it, whatever  _it_  is, has Derek this on edge, Stiles knows better than to go diving in headfirst.

Besides, he’s got firsthand experience with dying, and it’s not fun.

So he sticks to Derek like glue, the pack falling in synch around them.  Lydia has her staff, Allison her crossbow, and there’s a flash of the wolf in the eyes of the others.

Stiles can’t help but love them all for it.  He readies his athame on reflex, gripping it by the blade tight enough that if he squeezes any harder, he’ll bleed.  And if he bleeds, he can do some pretty impressive blood magic, and Derek will go absolutely  _insane_  in his defense.

They all head for the door, and Derek opens it, a snarl ready on his lips.

There’s what looks like a man on their doorstep.  He feels like more, though, somehow.  Like something bigger than that.

He’s in a business suit, be-stubbled and with floppy brown hair and a serious expression.

“Who are you.” Derek doesn’t make it a question, but an order.

The man responds by raising his hand for less than an instant, pressing two fingers to Derek’s forehead.  Derek passed out, crumpling to the floor.

The pack went wild, all lunging at the intruder at once.

He flung them all back, pinning them to the walls.

Stiles still stood in the middle of the room, untouched.  Okay.  So the thing was after him.

“That didn’t answer Derek’s question,” Stiles said quietly, dangerously.

The man-looking thing in the business suit tilted his head and smiled softly.  “I am Inias, and I am an angel of the Lord.”

* * *

Inias is reminded almost painfully of his brother when Stiles buries an athame in his chest.

“Please don’t do that,” he says quietly.

Stiles looks at him warily, wildly, and Inias is sure that they’ve pulled the right man out of Hell.  He has all the bearing of the wolves he runs with, and he vibrates with tension like a violin string.

“What.  Are.  You.”

“An angel, Stiles,” he repeats.  “I’m the one who pulled you out of Hell.”

Stiles yanks his knife out of Inias, stepping back and crossing his arms over his chest.  “Prove it.”

Inias sighs, and flares out his wings – the shadows of them, anyway, to anyone who doesn’t have some kind of second sight.

One of the women (human, he thinks) makes a terrified noise and screws shut her eyes against them. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.  “I didn’t know you had a psychic here.”

Stiles is staring at him with something approaching terror mixed with understanding.  He takes a few steps back.  “Get out of here.  Leave this pack alone.”

There is power in the man’s words, and Inias isn’t sure how that is.

“No.  We need your help.”

“Why?” says another of the three women, this time the one who’d been carrying a bow.  She is human too, but has been running with the pack for as long as Stiles has, and has the same hard, vicious edge.  “If you’re an angel, doesn’t that mean you’ve got God on your side.”

Inias tenses at the mention of his Father.

“I wish it were that simple.”

* * *

Inias isn’t harmless.  That much is clear from the very beginning.  But he isn’t lying when he says he needs them.

Derek remains in Stiles’ space, and the rest of the pack keeps close as well while Inias explains himself.

“Thirteen years ago, Lucifer rose from his cage in Hell.  The world very nearly ended, but he was caged again – this time alongside Michael.  We thought that would be the end of it.”  Inias looks down.  “It was not.  There was a civil war in Heaven, and Purgatory was opened several times.  When things were all finished out…there are not many angels left.

“And it’s happening again.  The walls between Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, and Earth are all weakening.”

Lydia stiffens.

“That can’t be good,” Scott says quietly.

“It is not,” Inias affirms.  “If…if the walls break down, and Michael and Lucifer escape their prison, they will stop at nothing to find vessels and finish their war.  And Hell might well win this one, if its Queen will still obey her  _Lord._ ”  He says the word with distaste.

“That doesn’t explain why you need  _me_ , specifically.”  Stiles presses closer to Derek.

“There is a prophecy.  According to the Prophet Kevin Tran, the boy who runs with wolves will rise on angel’s wings to stop the destruction in the midst of the Great Tribulation.”

“So, you raised Stiles from Hell,” Jackson says, speaking up for the first time, “specifically so he could be the one to fulfill your stupid prophecy?”

“There is no one else who can.  Stiles is a werewolf’s mate, a fixture in his pack, and he was in Hell for a deal he made.  We had no other choice.”  Inias looks Jackson straight in the eyes.  “Believe me, we would have asked, if we had any choice at all in the matter.”

“Good to know,” Stiles says quietly.  “But who’s ‘we?’”

“Heaven.  The Winchesters.”  Inias shrugs.  “Some others the Winchesters have encountered since the last Apocalypse.  There are not many of us.”

“Winchesters?” Lydia asks sharply.  “ _Winchesters?_ ”

“Do you already know them?” Inias asks back.

Lydia gives him her patented ‘are you seriously insane?’ look.  “There are stories.  All over – saving people, hunting things.”

“The family business,” Allison mumbles, catching on.  “Holy shit.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, “What the Hell is a Winchester?”

* * *

For the Winchesters, it once again begins with fire.

A wildfire rips through Sam and his wife’s home in California.  They both make it out alive, with is a mercy Dean is glad to have had but never would have expected.

He likes Julie, he really does, but with Sammy’s track record with women, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if she’d died in that house.  It’s a horrible thing to think about, but Dean has grown up thinking about the most horrible things (some of which he has actually done, after all).

When Cas disappears three days later, though, it’s time to go to war.

They’d known it was something supernatural once again fucking up their lives.  They’d smelled the sulfur in the air before and after the blaze, and Julie swears she saw a monster set it alight.

They’re all in their forties, now, but Dean feels young again.  Seven years in off-and-on retirement had been getting to him, and he’s back with a vengeance now.  Especially with Cas missing – that’s not something you can just sit back and think about.

That requires  _action._

So they call everyone who’s left.  Jody, Charlie (she’d been the one to get in touch with  _them,_  two years after the Leviathans, with a rugaru incident in Oregon), the Ghostfacers, even.

And they pray.

Inias, of course, is the only one who answers, and is the most willing to get shit done to get Cas back.

They get hold of Kevin – Kevin’s hard to track but Charlie’s a better tracker than anyone on the planet – and he tells them about a vision he had.  Destruction and apocalypses and a boy who runs with werewolves, burning in Hell, who can save them.

Inias gives Dean a single look before he disappears, and Dean does his best to put faith in him.

It’s a success, and the man Kevin’s visions were talking about, and Inias brought him home.  It’s not very far, so they fire up Baby and head on up. 

It’s a lot like it used to be – Dean driving, Sam in shotgun.  Julie’s in the backseat, taking in everything quietly, the way she does, accepting everything as it comes.  Dean knows that that’s part of why Sam loves her as fiercely as he does.

Eventually, they see a small town population sign that says,  _Welcome  to Beacon Hills._

They’re there, but Dean’s not sure what they’ll find.

* * *

“You’re kidding me.”  Stiles takes one look at the Winchesters, and then back at Inias.  ”These are the guys who saved the world?”

“Watch your tone,” Inias murmurs gently.  ”They don’t like being underestimated.”

“We also like being treated like we’re actually in the room,” Dean says, giving Inias a capital-L Look.  ”Just, generally speaking.”

Erica gives a wolfish grin. “Sweetheart, have you paid any attention to your surroundings?”

Boyd makes a soft, warning growl, and Erica laughs, sidling up against her mate’s side.  ”Old habits die hard.  And he’s pretty, for forty-five.”

Dean glares at her.  ”I’m spoken for, girlie.”

“Good for her,” Erica bites back, happy to have someone to spite.

“Uh, Erica,” Isaac says quietly, “I don’t think —”

“Castiel is my brother,” Inias finishes, trying to avert further embarrassment and possible bloodshed.  ”And he is missing.”

“What does that have to do with — oh.”  Scott flushes as he realizes what Inias means.

Lydia’s eyebrows shoot up.  ”Oh _my._ ”

There’s something licentious in her voice, and Jackson just rolls his eyes.

“So, the world is ending, _again_ , and Dean Winchester’s angel boyfriend is missing, and apparently I’m the only one who can stop it?” Stiles asks the room at large.

“That about covers it,” Sam says, shrugging.

“Well, that sounds like  _fun_.”


	3. Learn From Your Mother

Allison slides down the outside wall of the Hale house.  Even after all these years, she’s antsy about calling it “home” — even though it practically is, since Stiles lives there, since the pack Alpha calls it home, since Derek and Stiles babysit Mels and Chrissy as often as Lydia and Jackson do — and the arrival of new hunters on her family’s territory (under her family’s protection) has put her back on her guard.

God, she misses her mother sometimes.  As bad as her mom had gotten near the end, as much of a bloodthirsty monster as she’d become even before getting the Bite, Mom was still her mom.  She’d only been trying to protect her family.

And there is no instinct Allison knows better than that.

Everyone else is busy dealing with the new arrivals — putting up the Winchesters (including Sam’s wife, Julie, who isn’t a hunter but could be one if she tried) and Inias in two of the guest bedrooms, making supper, everything like that.  She’d handed the kids off to Scott to come out here and give herself some time to breathe.

Things are going to get complicated from here on out, she knows.

She needs to call her dad, but Dad’s retired, moved East to Kansas, because it’s been a dead spot for supernatural activity since about the time they moved to Beacon Hills back at the start of everything.

She can’t bring him out of it, not for this.

She buries her face in her hands and takes a deep breath, just as Scott comes round the corner, suspiciously kid-free.

“Allison?” he asks softly, crouching down next to her and nosing into the crook of her neck.  It’s not just an “are you okay?” question he’s asking, though, and she takes a deep breath before he finishes, breathing the words quickly against her skin:

“Why do those Winchester guys smell familiar?”

* * *

Stiles leans against Derek after things have calmed down. They’re careful with each other, and Stiles is thankful for that — he just wants to be able to hold onto Derek right now, just wants to make the rest of the worlds disappear for a while. He doesn’t know if he can deal with this prophecy hanging over his head, especially so soon after rising out of Hell.

He shivers, and Derek’s arms tighten around him. Derek growls softly, sound rumbling through Stiles’s chest where it rests against Derek’s. It’s a comforting growl, the kind of noise that Derek makes when they’re alone together after a fight.

“Thanks,” Stiles mumbles, turning his face to nuzzle into the junction of Derek’s neck and shoulder.

Derek noses along his hairline gently. “Still — be careful. I don’t trust these Winchesters. They reek of death.”

Stiles chuckles. “Ominous.”

“I’m serious, Stiles. There are things they’re not telling us, and I don’t like it.” Derek shakes his head. “And they’re hunters.”

Stiles can hear the unspoken  _hunters-not-Allison, hunters-not-pack_  tacked on the end.

He nods. “I understand,” he murmurs. “But we owe them. I was dead, but I’m not anymore, because of them.”

Derek does something close to a snarl and pulls Stiles into a kiss, like he refuses to think about owing the Winchesters anything — to owing a pair of  _hunters_  and their angel friend anything. Stiles lets him keep going on that, melting against him.

After all, he doesn’t really want to think about it either.

* * *

Dean doesn't sleep at all that night, which is why Lydia Martin is able to corner him.  She looks at him with harsh, calculating eyes -- not that he was expecting anything else from a pack of werewolves and their human mates -- and leans against the doorframe of his room.

"What aren't you telling us?" she asks quietly.  "Aside from the things I already know."

"I don't know what things you already know, kid," Dean says, crossing his arms over his chest.

Lydia exhales through her nose.  "That the Apocalypse wasn't just something you and your brother  _stopped_."

Dean tenses.  Even after all this time, the memory still haunts him:

_As he breaks, so shall it break._

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says.

"You're lying."  She looks at him with dark eyes.  "I may not have a wolf's senses, but I'm good at telling when people are lying.  And when people are broken."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Lydia smirks.  "Fine.  I also know that you're a hunter from a line of hunters.  Your mother's name was Mary Campbell, and your father's name was John.  You met a woman named Bela during the last year before you died and went to Hell yourself.  Your brother Sam had or still has psychic abilities because of a yellow-eyed demon called Azazel, who is the one who killed your mother.  Your father made a deal to bring you back to life when you pretty much died in a car accident, and you made a deal to bring your brother back when he was stabbed in the back by one of the other Special Children."

"You read the books."  Great.  The last thing he needs is a fangirl right now.

"I was in junior high, and I was bored."  Lydia waves her hand dismissively.  "That's the easy stuff -- the stuff that got published mainstream.  It's the other books that are hard to track down."

"I told him not to publish anymore of them."

"E-books, hon," Lydia responds.  "The Apocalypse comes and goes, and you survive and Sam doesn't, and the angel Castiel becomes Sheriff in Heaven.  That's all there is."

Dean nods.

"But we both know that's not true."

"How do you figure?"

"Because I have never seen a man be broken so quietly, like you're used to it.  This is far from the first time you've lost your angel, isn't it?"  Lydia takes a step forward, one hand landing on her hip, cocking the other out.  "But it hurts as bad every time.  You just got so damn good at hiding it."

Dean exhales.  "I don't have to answer to you."

"No, you don't.  But maybe you should answer to yourself."

With that, the woman turns and walks away, and Dean closes the door behind her, her words worming uncomfortably under his skin.

* * *

The next morning, Derek calls a pack meeting.  Most of the pack thinks it’s just to discuss what’s going on – they’d be half right, Stiles supposes – but there’s more to it than that.

The Winchesters and the angel are in town.  Stiles had asked them for some space, and they’d obliged.  Lydia had watched them with measuring eyes, and Stiles still wonders why she’s so interested in paying attention specifically to them.

“There’s something I have to say,” Allison says from her place at Scott’s side.  Derek nods.

Stiles isn’t sure exactly what this is about, but whatever it is, it’s probably better to have it out in the open.  Too much had gone wrong in the early days – back when everyone had a secret, everyone an agenda.

“My mother’s maiden name was Victoria Campbell,” Allison says quietly.

Erica’s eyebrows raise, but none of the other pack members seem to find the name significant.  They look around at each other as if to ask what memo it was they all missed.

Stiles is confused, himself.

Lydia speaks up.  “The Winchesters are the sons of Mary Campbell-Winchester.  They’re Allison’s second-cousins.”

“That makes sense, though,” Boyd says.  “Hunters find each other.  And it’s not like many people outside that group would feel safe marrying one.”

“It makes sense, but it makes us even less safe than we were before,” Allison says.  “The Winchesters…they don’t know about my mother.  They don’t know I’m related to them – and it should stay that way.”

“Why?” Jackson and Scott ask in unison.

Lydia shakes her head.  “It’s just a bad idea.  Winchester relatives tend to die quick, bloody, painful deaths.”

Scott pulls Allison a little closer.

Stiles isn’t really paying attention at this point, though, because the name _Campbell_ is all-too-familiar.

“I need to call my dad,” he says, getting up and leaving the room.

He hits his dad’s speed-dial.

“Stiles?” Dad asks.

“Dad, what was Mom’s maiden name?”

“Campbell.  Why do you ask?”


End file.
